


ichor

by orphan_account



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: sometimes, when cassidy joseph gets her nose broken she wonders if she ought to bleed gold.it's always red. still, it's an entertaining thought.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Original Female Character(s), Landon Kirby & Original Female Character(s), Rafael Waithe & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The three of them are an odd trio at best. Cassidy Joseph, Landon Kirby, and Rafael Waithe walking down the street toward the Catholic church in their neighborhood, of all places. Not that redemption isn't needed, but perhaps confessing a couple dozen sins to a vaguely fanatic local priest isn't the way to go about earning it. Landon's eyebrows are raised halfway to heaven, and Cassidy isn't exactly about to disagree with his exasperation for Rafael's evening plans.

"Rafael! Seriously, it's not right," Landon says, arms flying through the cooling night air. He's always been tightly wound, and now was no exception- and he'd given up on the chill brother act four blocks ago. 

"It is what it is, Landon," Rafael sighs, arms hanging dejectedly by his sides. Cassidy's face falls in an almost comical fashion, and she bumps her shoulder against his.

"You're not Catholic! You shouldn't have to confess your sins," Landon, again, exasperation growing.

"I tossed a lawnmower through the patio doors, bruh! If apologizing to God gets Hector and Maria off my back, so be it," Rafael nearly yells. Sure, he has anger issues, but, well, they were in foster care. It's not exactly exceptionally uncommon. Cassidy doesn't say a word, her eyes half glazed over. Her mind is somewhere else entirely.

They reach the front steps of the church, hesitating for a moment almost entirely in sync, before walking into the church, where Hector and Maria are standing at the sacristy with their the priest. Rafael almost looks appropriately nervous.

"Buenas tardes, Father Pietro," Rafael says, trying and failing to conceal the shaking in his voice. Terror isn't the right word, not yet. 

"Buenas tardes, Rafael. Por favor, pray with me," the priest says, wrapping an arm that was certainly meant to be friendly around Rafael's shoulders. Rafael goes stiff. 

Cassidy's eyes flicker around the church once, twice, looking somewhat like a caged animal. Landon looks at her, uneasy. He knows better than to assume that everything's okay. In fact, it's safer to assume it's not.

"Landon, Cassidy, you can leave now. It's okay, we can take it from here," Hector says, already attempting to herd them toward the door. Cassidy bristles- she is not wanted here, and that is not a good thing. Whatever they want to do to Rafael is something that any sane human won't allow- Cassidy may not be the best example of sanity, but Hector and Maria are worse still. 

"I'm good, Hector," Landon says, squaring his shoulders, a cold edge to his voice. Cassidy remains silent behind him, arms crossed.

"Hey, this is between your foster brother and God, okay?" Maria walks over to them and speaks in a soft voice. Motherly, Cassidy assumes. She still doesn't quite know what that feels like. Rafael, sensing tension reverberating in the air, turns and looks at his family. Maria looks away.

"Hey, I got it, seriously. Just wait outside," He says, tone assuring to a fault. Landon softens, shoulders slumping slightly. But the fight that rushes out of his posture appears almost tenfold in Cassidy's. Landon sighs and reluctantly does as he's told, walking out the door toward the stairs at the entrance while Hector and Maria follow after him. He knows Cassidy will do what she's decided to do. Better to stay out of her way.

"Cassidy, you too. This is a private matter," Hector, again. He certainly isn't keeping up a fatherly appearance. Cassidy almost appreciates it. He paces back towards her, and there's a look in his eyes that anyone who cared for their personal safety would flee from. Cassidy, however, is known to have an enormous degree of apathy towards that particular subject.

"No, I think I'm fine right here. Actually, now that I think about it, I owe the big man upstairs a little talk, and he just hates to be ke-"

"Cassidy," Hector repeats, all but grabbing Cassidy and throwing her out the door. She just about explodes, throwing his hand off her bicep.

"Touch me again, see what happens," She snaps, placing a hand on his chest and shoving. He stumbles back, and the atmosphere darkens. 

"This is a church, Cassidy. Have some respect," He snarls, striding toward her with a determined look in his eyes. Maria remains by the doors, whimpering. Behind her, Rafael is on his knees, looking more apprehensive by the second.

"You know, you're right. This is a church, and violence should be left out the door. But tell me, exactly what non-violent things are you planning to do with all those chains?" Her words echo as the church goes silent. Maria murmurs a prayer for forgiveness as she chains the doors shut.

And then, all at once, it explodes again.

"Deus, cui próprium et miseréri semper et párcere," Father Pietro cries, holding up a wooden cross in front of Rafael's face. It makes it very clear that this is less of a prayer and more of an exorcism.

Rafael is terrified. He makes a move to get up, to run, to leave this place and to never return when Hector and Maria grab Rafael by the shoulders and hold him in place while the priest continues the exorcism.

"What? What are you doing?" Rafael cries. Holy boy, named after an archangel and, now, something drenched in sin- something he neither earned nor deserved. He's in the middle of writhing under malevolent hands, trying, desperately to come free from his foster parents' hold when his bones begin to break. If Cassidy's thoughts were in such places, she would have appreciated the irony of being a witch in such a holy matter. What with Salem and all.

But she's too busy crossing the church, hands flying through the air and Archaic Latin flowing from her tongue. "Patre!" She cries, palms outstretched as she sends the priest hurtling down the aisle. A bit much, but Cassidy was never an underachiever. At least he can cause no problems unconscious.

Terrified, Hector and Maria recoil, pressing themselves to the pews as Rafael drops on all fours and shifts. He's a mess of bone now, and all Cassidy can do to ease his pain is condense it. Outside, Cassidy hears a faint commotion. Landon, probably, and Landon does not currently make her ever-growing list of problems, so the commotion is ignored.

And then, all of a sudden, Rafael's eyes turn black with gold irises, and his teeth begin to lengthen into fangs, revealing he is indeed a newly-triggered werewolf. Terrified, Hector and Maria turn to run, but not Cassidy. No, Cassidy places what she hopes is a calming hand on Rafael's shoulder. It seems to work, as he stops thrashing, at least momentarily.

"Help me," he pleads, tears of pain and fear running down his cheeks as he meets Cassidy's eyes. A corner of her mouth quirks upwards in what could technically be considered a smile. It's not for her sake.

"Always," she says it like a promise, a prayer. Binding words, when spoken by someone as stubborn as Cassidy Joseph.

And if there's one time that Cassidy's unmovable determination actually helped anyone it's in the church, unholy girl knelt over holy boy.

"Always, Rafael," A promise, a prayer, a proof of steely resilience. For a moment, it's peaceful. Even the shift stops, momentarily, as if not wishing to interrupt the moment. Cassidy has no such manners.

"Muto," 

The word carries weigh behind its purpose. A past buried, a past escaped. It's moments like this where Cassidy is not quite sure her dogged personality is her salvation or damnation. She doesn't much care as henley splits over chest, and Rafael roars. The thing revealed is no longer human. No longer human, but Rafael, nonetheless. Eyes meet eyes once more, damnation and salvation and protection and holy blood and bloody hands and Rafael realizes that he will never quite understand Cassidy Joseph, that perhaps no-one will, but she understands him, the guilt and the fear and the anger and she looks into his eyes and there is the feeling of being seen too seen and he snarls Cassidy be damned he wants to run to escape he can't stand the eyes-

And Cassidy murmurs another incantation, and it all goes black. Kneeling above a sleeping wolf that is Rafael too she realizes just how fast her heart is beating. It thrums in her chest like it seeks to escape her body, beats like the drums of a war she left behind.

And then the doors are blasted off their hinges, and she's half sure that Maria faints then and there. In the space left behind, a girl stands, hands outstretched. Witch, she realizes. Danger, she thinks.

"And who the hell are you?"

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cassidy can almost feel herself suffocating in the stiflingly tense atmosphere. She sits, wedged in-between teenage boys, and she finds it hard not to be jealous of the girl whose name she never learned, sitting comfortably in the passenger's seat, when Rafael begins to drool on her shoulder. She sighs and lets her head fall against the headrest

"How do you two know each other?" Al-something says, clearing his throat in a desperate attempt to break the ice. Cassidy resists the urge to cringe.

"He used to serve me milkshakes at the Mystic Grill." The girl says. She grins, and Cassidy finds herself relaxing for a fraction of a second. Pretty girls and their damned smiles.

"Peanut Butter Blast, Whipped cream on the bottom," Landon says, and he's so tense that she wishes she had something more comfortable wedged next to her, like a desiccated vampire, or the psycho priest she was almost certain she'd given a concussion. Landon pauses awkwardly for a moment before he continues.

"We danced once."

Cassidy does not resist the urge to cringe. Landon glares at her in what would be considered withering if it wasn't Landon. But at least she knows her name now, and who exactly she is; Landon-Would-Not-Shut-Up-About-Her-Hope. She does look exactly as pretty as Landon had described her.

"We tried. And then you moved away." the girl- Hope- giggles, voice soft and heavy with nostalgia.

"Then you made a door blow off its hinges with your brain. Do you feel like explaining that?" She's reminded, again, that Landon is not exempt from the foster kid rage they all carry with them. His lip curls ever-so-slightly back as he speaks, pearly whites glinting in the light. His elbow digs into her side. She'd back off if it wasn't Landon.

But it is, so instead of answering the question, she pretends she's asleep (again). He rolls his eyes so far back into his skull that it's almost impressive. She adds a snore in for good measure. Rafael is still drooling

"Oh, we'll explain everything. We're almost there." Alaric says, and she can tell he's familiar with the question. She's a bit on edge, but it's hardly more than usual.

"Where are we going?" Landon asks, confused. She is too, but she's also heard of the Salvatore School. It seemed too good to be true, and in Cassidy's experience, it usually is. Maybe not. She almost allows herself a sliver of optimism, but not yet. Not ever, really.

"Somewhere safe," Alvin answers, and her fingers twitch. She's never really been a fan of enclosed spaces. We'll see about that.

Hope fixes her with a reassuring look, and she feels almost caught.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

They finally arrive at the school, and Cassidy's fingers cease their drumming on her thighs when they come to a stop. She does her best to quell the fight or flight instinct that sets her veins aflame. Rafael, who'd finally woken up, attempts to make eye contact with her and is halfway through asking her if she's alright when she re-ignites their just-ended squabble about him and his sleeping habits.

"I don't drool!" He insists, perforative frustration raising his voice. They're both doing this to distract- it's an age-old habit.

"Yeah, well, I have a sopping wet shoulder on my jacket that would like to disagree," she holds it out to him as if it'd just been hauled from a dumpster (again). He smacks it away (again), and Landon rolls his eyes (again).

"First of all, that is barely even damp, second of all, I don't droo-" he cuts himself off at the last second, coming face to face with a two girls in uniform who're about their age. Cassidy sniggers loudly. It doesn't hide the cagey look in her eyes.

"Welcome to Salvatore School. We're your tour guides." blondey says, a customer service smile plaster on her face.

"I'm Josie." Brunette- Josie says, smile almost identical. Cassidy guesses they're related.

"I'm Lizzie. Sisters." Blondie- Lizzie, again.

"Twins."

"Fraternal, obvs." Cassidy's eyes flicker between the two, and they speak so fast it feels like she's watching a tennis match. 

She turns to her left and right, exchanging a look with Rafael and Landon that could best be described as apprehensive.

"Rafael, Cassidy, why don't you go ahead with the girls while I talk to Landon?" Alaric says, and Cassidy's fists clench. Last time something like this had happened... well. They ended up here. She murmurs a protection spell under her breath and ignores the look Hope gives her.

Josie and Lizzie walk up to them, and Cassidy has to resist the urge to recoil when Josie links her arm with Cassidy's. Beside her, she can see Lizzie doing the same to Rafael, and she nearly laughs at the pleading look he sends her way.

"Morning, Hope." The twins chorus and the amount of sarcasm dripping off the words leaves her confused. Social skills had never been her strong suit.

"Morning, girls" Hope rolls her eyes before responding. The feigned kindness in her voice sounds strained.

"More like despair." Lizzie quips to Josie across Cassidy and Rafael. She's left feeling confused- teenagers. Ugh.

"I heard that," Hope responds, sounding a bit like Cassidy does with Rafael.

"No, you didn't," Lizzie responds, and Cassidy nearly laughs.

"Didn't have to."

"Everyone, behave." Alvin groans exasperatedly. 

"Love you, Dad." The twins say, whisking them away from Landon. Cassidy groans internally. All the magic's putting her on edge. She almost prefers the group home.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

"Everybody gets along with everybody here, for the most part," Josie says, and she's reminded, yet again, that it's a tour of a school. It's almost familiar- she used to get these twice a year. Foster kid, gotta love it.

"The wolves are pretty cliquey. They like to hang with their own." Cassidy almost says obviously, and then remembers she's not supposed to know about that stuff. But, well, they're wolves. Pack mentality and all that.

"In defiance of the school's commitment to inclusiveness," Josie says, and Cassidy decides she's the nice twin.

"That is why we volunteered to be your tour guides-- to give you two a good witch-welcome before your hairier brethren can lay claim," Lizzie says. Cassidy tenses at that, feeling as though she's gotten herself kicked out of another home. But she'd never had friends like Landon and Rafael before. It feels worse, somehow.

They stop when they reach a classroom.

"That's our librarian, Mr. Williams. He's subbing for our Chemistry of Magic teacher, who accidentally incinerated himself last week in hellfire." Josie says, and Cassidy squashes the childish delight at Josie's words. She already knows better than that- delight is not a safe feeling.

"Burned all the hair off his body, but didn't leave a scar." Lizzie laughs, and a smile tugs at Cassidy's lips. She'd make a joke about that if she could.

"Now, this language has been carefully crafted over centuries. So, you may think you can play fast and loose with the syllables, but you'd be very wrong about that. Because otherwise, a love charm becomes a what?" Mr. Williams says, and Cassidy is surprised to find she knows the answer- a stink spell. She says nothing. He looks at the students before calling on a girl in the back.

"Penelope, show us."

Penelope turns in her seat so that everyone can see her, and Lizzie groans and rolls her eyes.

"She who shall not be named," Lizzie says, and Cassidy has a feeling that Harry Potter is a cultural point at the Salvatore School.

"Talking about her gives her power," Josie says quietly. Rafael and Cassidy exchange confused looks.

"Who are you talking about?" Rafael asks.

"Josie's evil ex," Lizzie says, a sneer in her voice.

Penelope seems to hear their conversation, as she looks backward at the three for a moment, winking at Josie playfully before holding up her hands to cast the spell. Josie stares at her angrily, her lip twitching in response.

"Phesmatos is lucas odoray." Penelope recites, and Cassidy automatically cringes away. The spell initially creates a gold orb that hovers in the air above her outstretched hands, but after a moment, it pops like a bubble. As though on cue, everyone begins coughing and covering their mouths as a result of the putrid smoke.

"That's right! A stink spell. Yes!" Dorian laughs, delighted. His students appear decidedly less so. Outside of the classroom, Lizzie coughs and rolls her eyes before turning to Rafael.

"Come on. We'll show you the turret. It's where all the seniors go to smoke," Lizzie says, and Cassidy grins.

"What do they smoke? Eye of newt?" Rafael chuckles.

"Weed," Josie replies.  
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  
They're halfway there when Cassidy tenses. Lizzie opens her mouth to ask what the problem is, but Cassidy's already gone. Rafael doesn't hesitate before sprinting off after her. The twins exchange a concerned look as he, too, rounds the corner. He'd already lost her, though. 

It takes her no less than thirty seconds to reach Alaric's office, eyes wild with rage. She can't find him by then, and it's terrifying.

"What the hell did you do to my brother," she screams, storming up to the man and shoving him back. And just when she was starting to trust him, too.

"I- I don't think-" Alaric stutters out, hands half-raised in surrender. Cassidy doesn't even acknowledge the white flag.

"The hell you don't! Where is he!" Cassidy yells, and she feels Hope coming up to- what? Restrain her? Good luck with that. She whirls, pointing a finger into Hope's face. Hope looks surprised at the challenge.

"Read my lips when I tell you that you've got all of five seconds to tell me where Landon is before I go get him myself and trust me when I say you don't want that," a threat. She's making a threat, and she doesn't regret it in the slightest. Hope looks at her like she knows Cassidy means it.

"Relax!" Alaric snaps, and Cassidy is halfway through a spell that would throw him out the window when Hope speaks up.

"He's in the cellar!"

The room goes quiet, and Cassidy shakes with barely-contained rage.

"You locked him in a cellar?" Cassidy's voice raises, and she sounds incredulous. This place is ridiculous.

"Well- yeah. We locked him in a cellar." Hope admits, deflating. Cassidy lets her finger drop, but she is no less on edge.

"You're lying," Cassidy fires off an accusation with no real weight behind it.

"I'm not. Just calm down, please. We don't want to hurt you," Hope speaks to her rather like she's talking to a wild animal.

"Sure. Once you tell Allen to put away the sedative. Seriously?" Cassidy asks. Alexander deflates, hands coming from behind his back. "Oh, wow. Two! I really do trust that you're keeping Landon safe, now, thanks for that,"

"Sorry," Allen says it as a reflex. She fixes him with a glare and is bitterly happy when he swallows.

The room stills for a moment, which makes it all the worse when Rafael bursts into the room.

"Anyone care to explain what the hell just happened?"

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Cassidy doesn't sleep that night. Instead, she chooses to lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling with such intensity she felt unreasonably familiar with it by morning. 

It's the twin bed across from Hope's she resides in, so she does her duty as a roommate and pretends to be asleep when she sneaks out.

Her brothers are happy, and she tries to convince herself she's happy too. She reaches out to them once or twice. Rafael is brimming with joy, and the feeling brings a smile to her lips. Landon experiences a few moments worth of fear, but before she gets concerned, Hope pops up, and she swears she's never retreated from someone's mind so quickly.

The amount of affection there makes her want to vomit.

She falls asleep right around dawn, which explains why she's still fast asleep when Rafael bursts into her dorm, yelling something about Landon.

Her boys, always getting into trouble.


	2. What the hell did you do?

"Hello...?" Cassidy hears Hope say, striding up behind her. She'd feel guilty if she cared. As she turns, Rafael slides out from under the SUV. He doesn't look so remorseful either. Call it loyalty.

"Hey." Rafael slides back under the SUV and continues tinkering with the undercarriage.

"What are you doing?" Hope asks, confused. She should be.

"Adjusting the sway bar,"

"Was it broken?"

"It is now." Rafael slides back out from under the SUV and holds up the bar, which he has wrenched off of the vehicle. He makes a compelling argument. Cassidy sniggers, leaning against the side of the car. Hope sighs and rolls her eyes, realizing what Rafael is doing as he makes his argument.

"You're going after Landon. If you want this car to work, we're going with you," He exchanges a look with Cassidy, who raises an eyebrow at him, smirking. She'd argued for sugar in the gas tanks of all the cars, but Rafael was far too kind. She hadn't even suggested any explosives.

"You should stay out of it. He's a liar and a thief." Hope responds, her condescending tone dripping with sarcasm.

"He took a stupid knife." Rafael scoffs, as though she was being dramatic. Cassidy knows damn well that no witch's knife is trivial, but Landon could've taken the nuclear launch codes for all she cares. Hope disagrees, apparently, looking at Rafael as though he's being ignorant.

"Nothing in this school is a stupid anything." Hope snaps. Cassidy takes a step forward, placing herself in the arms' reach of Rafael. Volatile, that one, although Cassidy's kind of throwing stones from a glass house.

"Look... He's my best friend. And you? You seem vengeful." He says, taking a deep breath, then another. Maybe she shouldn't be so worried- the school's doing him good already. He usually didn't get to the second one.

"Let me show you something," Hope says, and takes a step toward him and holds out her hands.

Cassidy coils like a spring, and then, well, springs, placing her body between Hope and her brother. She grabs Hope by the wrist and takes another step, pushing back until Hope's almost bent over the hood of the SUV.

Hope's eyes widen, almost as though she's not used to people challenging her like this. Cassidy doesn't know why seeing as she walks around giving out unsolicited acts of witchy-woo. Cassidy glares, and Hope meets her eyes, uneasily.

A flare of what could've been sympathy passes through Hope's eyes, gone as quickly as it came. Cassidy realizes her teeth are bared and she's still pinning Hope against the SUV. She steps back, her shoulders still taunt and Rafael still positioned behind her.

"Relax. Here, relax, let me show you," Hope murmurs, and it's as comforting to Cassidy as she wishes it weren't. Her hands drift up again, and this time Cassidy lets them come to rest atop her temples, albeit reluctantly. She's always been one to play fast and loose with her own well-being.

"Close your eyes."

Cassidy, as always, doesn't do as she's told, and Hope sighs, letting her own eyes flutter shut first in a display of... trust? Cassidy follows suite a few moments later, although her brown is still creased with that wary glare even with her eyes shut.

Hope mutters an incantation under her breath and Cassidy relaxes-ish. A simple little memory-share spell. She was about to think that she needn't have been so worried when the blackness of her vision gives way to an image entirely worse.

She feels the black magic before she sees anything- it feels like snapping a rat's neck. Then she sees Landon, sleeping on a bus. His jacket pocket glows red, Landon pulls the witches knife out of his pocket only to recoil, covering his eyes at the blinding intensity of the red glow the knife is giving off. It hurts to look at in hindsight, and not just the sun-like burn of the knife

Cassidy wants to lunge through the vision, help him, do anything at all. But she can't, and she feels so goddamn helpless when the vision jumps, as visions tend to do, to a crime scene. It's the remains of the bus- the bus itself has been incinerated, and the stench of death is overwhelming and she knows that there are so many people dead on that bus and she knows not a single one of them is Landon.

Cassidy jerks away, chest heaving. There's something like an understanding between her and pretty-girl Hope, not that Cassidy likes it. Cassidy steps back and sighs- she wasn't gonna let Landon die, but there was a bus full of charred corpses and no there suspects. Better a cell than a grave.

"I'm coming with you," Cassidy says. Hope opens her mouth to protest, looking almost offended,

"We're coming with you," Rafael adds, and Cassidy doesn't protest- the three of them are all so goddamn stubborn, and bickering with Raf is at the bottom of her list right about now.

"Like hell you are!" Hope exclaims, clearly lacking Cassidy's qualms about infighting. Then Alaric, obviously in a hurry, rushes past them tossing a black duffle bag in the SUV

"They can come," He says, almost dismissive. Cassidy counts it as a win. Hope looks at him like he's lost his mind.

"What?" Hope says, incredulous.

"They know Landon. That'll be an asset. And we need all the help we can get-" Alaric turns to the two of them,

"So, fix the car and hop in,"

Cassidy murmurs something under her breath, and the sway bar flies back into its place underneath the car. She swings her body into the backseat, looking infuriatingly smug. Hope looks infuriated by her, but Cassidy still senses less underlying mistrust. She takes that one as a win, too.

━━━━━━━✧✦✧━━━━━━━

Alaric, Hope, Cassidy, and Rafael pull up to the side of the bus explosion on the highway, and Cassidy tenses. To say she's on guard is an understatement. So are the rest of the gang, apparently, because the tension is so thick Cassidy can taste it- like iron, or blood, bitter and metallic and familiar.

"I don't know why he's still out here. He has a whole day's lead on us. He could be anywhere." Hope says, and Cassidy doesn't want to patronize an obviously pissed off teenage witch- but she's whining.

"Maybe 'cause he doesn't have a reason to run." Rafael snaps. Cassidy rolls her eyes when she notices Hope doing the same- she and Hope have such similar sardonic tendencies.

"Logic that would be perfectly believable if he hadn't, you know... ran." Hope retorts, bitter and sarcastic and Cassidy bites back a snort.

"Wait. Shh!"Alaric hisses, abruptly stopping in his tracks and clearly listening for, well, something.

"You hear that?" Alaric frowns at Hope and Rafael,

"Someone's here," Alaric takes off and Cassidy rolls her eyes before jogging off after him, trailing behind Hope and Raf. It's not Landon, she knew that, but it is interesting. It's a woman sitting on the ground, hiding behind a large tree. She quickly scrambles to her feet, and Cassidy makes a, well, face at the fashion choices being made. She's wearing a long white dress that's as covered in soot as the rest of her. There are white flowers dotted in her hair and she's so very scared.

"It's okay. I-I'm not gonna hurt you," Alaric holds his hands up in a show of peace. The woman continues looking back and forth at Alaric, Cassidy, Hope, and Rafael just as the former starts to question her on what happened.

"Were you on the bus? Can you tell us what happened?" The woman curiously looks at the forest around her but remains silent, as though she doesn't quite understand what they're saying. Cassidy frowns and looks at Alaric.

"Hablas español?" Cassidy tries, but still nothing. She doesn't respond to Chinese, Arabic, French, Russian, or German either. She doesn't respond at all, actually, but at least she's impressed her new friends. She just looks at the four of them with wide eyes and Alaric sighs.

"I think she's in shock," Alaric says after Cassidy essentially ran out of languages.

"Is she a survivor?" Hope asks, furrowing her eyebrows

"Smells like it. She reeks of smoke,"

"Look, I need to get her to the police so she can get some medical attention. Uh, why don't you two go ahead?" Alaric sighs.

━━━━━━━✧✦✧━━━━━━━

Cassidy is finding herself incredibly thankful for her tendency to go on angry runs. You know the saying, "You don't have to run faster than the bear to getaway. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you."

Well. She's faster than Alaric, by any means, and she's also trying to get somewhere first. A weird root cellar in the middle of the woods, actually. And when she does get inside, coming to a skidding halt, she's greeted with the sight of Hope and Rafael standing by an intact (good) but anxious-looking (less good, not quite bad).

Anything she was going to say was promptly knocked from her brain when Alaric comes skidding into the cellar after her, yelling about a fire-breathing woman in the woods.

"Well, there's no need to get worked up about it," Cassidy bites, buts she's ignored in favor of Alaric's headmaster-ness.

"Did I or did I not say to not engage?"

Hope rolls her eyes in annoyance. "He's only dangerous if crappy apologies can kill."

"Looks can be deceiving. Now, our bus refugee? Turns out, she's a pyromancer."

"Wait, wh-what's a pyromancer?" Landon stutters out at the same time Cassidy snaps "Oh really, I wouldn't have guessed!"

"A fire-breathing witch," Hope responds in a soft voice.

"Ric, she wants the knife."

" Okay, well, where is it? Alaric and Hope both turn to Landon, who once again begins stuttering anxiously.

"I-I lost it in the woods. I was running around in circles all night, trying to find a place to hide."

Alaric sighs, deciding to take Landon at his word before beginning to formulate a plan.

"Okay, okay... Well, let's, uh, find it before she does, huh?" Alaric says, before turning and exiting the root cellar, only to find the woman standing a few feet away. Cassidy squeezes her eyes shut and Hope swears she hears her say "Kill me now," under her breath.

"We don't want any trouble..." Alaric says quietly, holding up his hands in peace, again.

The woman holds out her hand in a silent request for the knife, and then turns all of her attention towards Landon, clearly sensing something.

"What does she want?" Rafael asks nervously

"I don't know," Landon replies, voice shaking. Cassidy reaches out toward the woman and then whirls her heard towards her foster brother.

"Hey, Landon?" Cassidy asks, her voice strained.

"Yeah?" Landon replies, equally tense.

"You mind taking that knife you don't have back down to the root cellar for me?" 

"Will do," Landon says, rushing back through the cell door, quickly followed by the other four, who know that the woman's eyes glowing orange means nothing good. And because Cassidy's day honestly couldn't get any worse, the woman begins breathing fire behind them, forcing them to slam shut the doors into the root cellar, which immediately catch fire

"Where the hell is it?" Hope snaps, rounding on Landon furiously, backing him into a corner.

Landon quickly pulls the knife out of his inner jacket pocket and moves to hand it to her.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Cassidy snaps, snatching the knife out of his hands. 

"Hey!" Hope protests.

"Landon. Why. The. _Hell_. Do you have this knife?" She grits out through her teeth.

"I'm sorry! I panicked." Landon babbles, confused and scared and all Cassidy wanted was one day to rest, why couldn't she have just one fucking day?

"What the hell, Lan?"

"Give that to me," Hope snaps, making a move to grab the knife out of Cassidy's hands. Just then, Alaric notices the doors are still ablaze and redirects their attention to the more immediate problem

"Hello! The doors!"

"I got it," the two of them say at the same time, and then exchange a glare. Cassidy yields in the end, if only for more time to yell at Landon.


End file.
